Charitable Choice
What direction is the Faith-Based and Community Initiative headed? What new innovations are needed? Read the Center's 11th Annual Kuyper Lecture, "Keeping the Faith in the Faith-Based Initiative" with former White House staff member Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies to find out!
How has the Bush Administration's Faith-Based and Community Initiative been implemented so far? What are the future challenges? Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, Director of Social Policy Studies at the Center for Public Justice testified before a congressional subcommittee in June 2005. Read his testimony.
Fact Sheet: Compassion in Action: Producing Real Results for Americans Most in Need President George W. Bush discussed his commitment to advancing the faith-based initiative in 2005 during the White House Leadership Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in Washington, D.C.
NEW RELEASE! This timely new book, The Freedom of Faith-Based Organizations to Staff on a Religious Basis sets the record straight on one of the most important and widely misunderstood policies of the Bush Administration's Faith-Based and Community Initiative. Contrary to the charges of critics, the right of faith-based organizations to choose staff members who share their faith or otherwise agree with their mission is not job discrimination, it is a positive freedom and a long established civil right of religious organizations that they do not necessarily have to give up when they receive public funds to serve their communities. Read more.
New Grant Awards Announced for Compassion Capital Fund, Access to Recovery, and Mentoring Children of Prisoners programs
Center for Public Justice Applauds Launch of New Community Solutions Coalition. Read the press release regarding the new bipartisan House Community Solutions and Initiatives caucus. download PDF
President Advances Faith-Based and Community Initiative. On June 1, The President signed an executive order creating three more Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to implement reforms to level the playing field for faith-based and secular organizations. This brings the current number of Centers at the federal level to ten. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040601-1.html)
In a speech in Washington, DC to thousands of representatives from community and faith-based organizations, the President also highlighted new regulatory reforms to end discrimination against religious and secular organizations that seek to collaborate with federally funded social service, education, housing, veterans, Native Americans, and international relief and development programs. For more information, see the White House web site at http://www.fbci.gov.
HHS Announces New Round of Compassion Capital Fund Grants. More information at: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ccf.
White House Advances Faith-Based Initiative, January 15, 2004. --go to White House News Release
New Technical Assistance Website launched: http://www.fastennetwork.org/ -- Faith-Based Organizations have an important new resource with the FASTEN network. FASTEN's mission is to strengthen and support faith-based social services, especially in distressed urban communities throughout the United States. The Faith and Service Technical Education Network (FASTEN) is a collaborative initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts working in partnership with: Baylor University's School of Social Work (more info here and here), Harvard University's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Hudson Institute's Faith in Communities Initiative (more info), and The National Crime Prevention Council's Center for Faith and Service.
New religious freedom coalition launched. The Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom is a multi-faith alliance of faith-based organizations devoted to preserving the freedom and autonomy of religious organizations that partner with government or are affected by government regulation. Key concerns include preserving and extending the freedom of faith-based organizations to use religious criteria in hiring staff members (whether or not the organizations accept government
funds) and ensuring that federal laws and statutes respect both the religious character of faith-based organizations and the religious liberty of the people they serve. Members of the coalition represent diverse religious traditions and diverse organizations that serve the public good. Coalition organizations meet monthly on the third Thursday of each month in Washington, DC. The Coalition works with citizens, government leaders, and the media to advocate public policies that protect the religious freedom of all citizens and religious organizations. Instead of supporting the idea of a "naked public square" or an incorrect interpretation of "separation of church and state" in which an ideology of secularism is permitted to marginalize and privatize all religious ways of life that should legitimately flourish in the public square, the Coalition advocates true government neutrality to promote full religious freedom for people of all faiths consistent with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. For further information, please contact Stanley Carlson-Thies or Stephen Lazarus at the Center for Public Justice, 410-571-6300.
Resource from the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom: "Ten Reasons for Religious Staffing" (PDF) -- Why the religious staffing freedom in civil rights law is legal, constitutional, and necessary.
The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives recently released a statement clarifying the religious staffing rights of faith-based organizations in current civil rights law entitled Protecting the Civil Rights and Religious Liberty of Faith-Based Organizations: Why Religious Hiring Rights Must be Preserved (PDF).
The Faith-Based Initiative--Two Years Later: Examining its Potential, Progress and Problems -- A conversation sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy. Featuring Stanley Carlson-Thies (Center for Public Justice) and Barry Lynn (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State). March 5. The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. Transcript.
Report -- Fruitful Collaborations: A Survey of Government-Funded Faith-Based Programs in 15 States -- from the Hudson Institute. Transcript from the 9/4/02 Press Briefing at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
Report -- Unlevel Playing Field: Barriers to Participation by Faith-Based and Community Organizations in Federal Social Service Programs -- Landmark report (PDF) from the White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. President Bush's statement -- Transcripts from The Brookings Institution
Report -- Working Faith: How Religious Organizations Provide Welfare-to-Work Services -- by Stephen V. Monsma, from the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society
Report -- Objective Hope: Assessing the Effectiveness of Faith-Based Organizations: A Review of the Literature -- by Byron R. Johnson, from the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society
Report -- Collaborations Catalog -- The Growing Impact of Government Partnerships with Faith-Based Organizations: Research Findings from the States -- from the Hudson Institute. Transcript from the 4/24/02 Press Briefing at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
Report -- "Can an Office Change a Country? The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, a Year in Review" -- from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
Charitable Choice is a provision in federal law that ends discrimination against faith-based organizations when government is choosing which group will get funds to provide services. It protects the religious character of faith-based providers that accept government funds and also the religious liberty of people needing assistance. It respects the constitutional requirements and provides for the needed government oversight.
President George W. Bush announced on January 29, 2001, that his administration will actively seek to "enlist, equip, enable, empower, and expand" the work of faith-based and community groups. He has createe a new White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives and counterpart Centers for Faith-based and Community Initiatives in several major federal departments. (For the White House announcement and executive orders, click here.)
Their task is to encourage expanded private giving to charities, pioneer innovative new federal partnerships with faith-based and grassroots groups, and clear away legal and practical barriers that inhibit flexible cooperation between government and religious and charitable organizations.
Implementation and expansion of Charitable Choice will be a major focus. Even though Congress enacted Charitable Choice four separate times during the Clinton administration, federal, state, and local policy and spending has not yet become much more open to faith-based groups and programs. Most state and local governments have been slow to change their spending rules to create the level playing field required by Charitable Choice (see Charitable Choice Compliance - A National Report Card). And Charitable Choice governs only a few federal spending programs, so that most federal and state social spending still has restrictive rules.
The White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives will work with federal departments to make sure they comply with Charitable Choice. It will encourage and urge state and local governments to implement the letter and spirit of Charitable Choice. It will work with Congress to expand the principle to additional areas of federal social spending.
The Center for Public Justice salutes and supports the President's new social agenda (see Center for Public Justice Applauds New White House Office). We have promoted, defended, and help to shape Charitable Choice legislation since 1995. We have researched the growing impact of Charitable Choice. We provide guidance on how government officials should implement the principle and how faith communities might best respond to the opportunities and challenges of this new era of greater government openness to faith-based initiatives.
The Charitable Choice Concept
The Charitable Choice provision in federal law is a path-breaking public policy innovation with great potential for making public assistance programs more effective. Charitable Choice changes procurement rules to enable government to work more closely with faith-based groups to help the poor and needy. It is not a separate pot of money for houses of worship. It is not a plan to collapse government social programs and dump the needy on the doorsteps of churches and charities. It is not a scheme to force the poor to get religion. Instead, it is a set of new rules that applies whenever governments use certain federal funds to buy welfare and social services. The goal is more fruitful relations between government and faith-based organizations, and more effective assistance for individuals, families, and neighborhoods that need help.
Charitable Choice Principles
Services and Funds Covered by Charitable Choice
In addition to these federal funds, if state or local governments mix their own funds with the federal funds, then all of the money must be spent according to the Charitable Choice rules.
A few states have applied Charitable Choice also to additional state and local funds and programs (Texas, Wisconsin, Arizona).
For the federal Charitable Choice provision to make a difference for faith-based groups in a particular state or locality, the state or local government must change its rules for purchasing social services to make them comply with the new freedoms and responsibilities of Charitable Choice. Many state and local governments have been very slow to change their own practices. See Charitable Choice Compliance - A National Report Card.
The Center for Public Justice is the leading independent authority on Charitable Choice. The Center's Charitable Choice Tracking Project, led by Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, conducted the first nationwide study on the implementation of this important policy, and continues to be the principle source for information about Charitable Choice. By advocating reforms such as Charitable Choice, The Center aims to strengthen the independent institutions of civil society and to promote justice in relationships between government and civil society.
Press Release: Center for Public Justice Applauds New White House Office (1/31/01)
Press Release: CPJ Defends Bush Meeting with Black Clergy (12/20/00)
Press Release: States Fail Charitable Choice Checkup (9/28/00) See also: Charitable Choice Compliance - A National Report Card
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The development of the Charitable Choice section of the Center's website was made possible through a generous grant by the Annie E. Casey Foundation of Baltimore, MD.
